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Liquidation for radio industry stalwart Audionics

Radio equipment and integration company Audionics has gone into liquidation. The Sheffield, UK firm produced a range of products, as well as undertaking custom design and build projects. The liquidator told PSNEurope it is confident that creditors will receive either full or "substantial" payment.

Radio equipment and integration company Audionics has been wound up and its assets are being sold, PSNEurope has learned. The 26-year-old firm was based in Sheffield and produced a range of products, including distribution amplifiers, talkback systems, audio routing/switching matrices and audio mixers, as well as undertaking custom design and build projects. The liquidator is confident that creditors will receive either full or “substantial” payment.

Founded in 1987 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Yorkshire Radio Network (YRN), Audionics was formed to offer the skills of the parent company’s in-house technical team on a commercial basis. YRN’s had already designed much of the equipment used by stations within the group and continued to do this under the Audionics brand, while at the same time working with other commercial broadcasters and the BBC.

A management buyout backed by a group of Yorkshire business people took place in 1991. Involved in this were Phil Myers and Phil Davies, who had been instrumental in building up Audionics as a standalone concern. In 2007 Myers and Davies, who had become executive directors, took over as joint owners of the company. That same year, the company made headlines when its HQ was flooded by the rising River Don, which burst its banks following heavy storms.

Audionics established a range that covered power distribution, internet control, digital audio units such as the DA210D distribution amplifier, routing with the MCX4 and the Com2000 talkback system. Two of the company’s Silence Detector units are shown above.

Liquidator Philip Daly of Daly & Co told PSNEurope that Audionics had been put into a “members’ voluntary liquidation”. This is done when a company is solvent – in other words it can pay its debts; this usually happens because the owners want to retire, or it is a family business and nobody else wants to run it, or the business has run its course. There was no indication if any of these was the reason for the winding up of Audionics. However, a source close to the company suggested that the radio specialist’s over-reliance on the domestic market had caused a downturn in sales over the last two years.

Daly said there should be “sufficient monies” to pay creditors in full or at least substantially, although this does depend on the sale of Audionics’ premises. He added that eight employees, including two directors, had been in full-time employment at the time of winding up. All have been made redundant; some have found new jobs while others have decided to retire.